I would take George’s stewardship of this team over anyone. He wanted to win more than anyone, and would strive to make it happen. Yes he made mistakes, but we won more often than this regime.
Really? 1978 - 1996 between WS wins 1981 being our only WS appearances 1981 - 1995 between playoff appearances (asterisk less teams made the playoffs). A whole lot of overall bad baseball between 1982 and 1994.
Let’s not forget what would have been probably the worst trade of his regime, the proposed trade of Mariano Rivera for Felix Fermin at the end of spring training in 1996 because they were worried that Derek Jeter couldn’t cut it and Tony Fernandez (who was the incumbent SS who they had moved to 2B) broke his elbow (missed the entire season).
I am no fan of Cashman (too much reliance on analytics that they tend to use wrong, complacency throughout organization causing lack of accountability, too lax of attitude during spring training and preparing for the season, over indulgence on some prospects while burying others, lack of sustain development of young players, always depending on mid season trades to fix flaws you knew you had coming into spring training and the list can go on).
It’s hard to get on Hal considering his payroll is consistently in the top three or four in the game. You don’t do that if you are not trying to win. The problem is that payroll allocation and that falls on Cashman.
The game is different than when Feorge was in charge. When was the last time time we had repeat WS champions?
That would be the 1998 - 2000 (should have been the 2001Yankees. Yes George was still the owner and active but those teams were built by GMs (Michaels, Watson and Cashman) based on player development (Williams, Petttite, Rivera, Jeter, Leyritz), smart trades before and during the season for key players and in some cases key reserves who came up big (Martinez, Wells, Clements,O’Neil, Cone, Fielder, Hayes, Vizcanio, Wettland, Curtis, Harrison) free agents (Key, Gooden, Boggs) and the occasional flash in the pen who came up big (Spencer, Ledee).
That is what is missing and Cashman has not been able to duplicate.